This statement concerning a process which interrelates manifestation and inspiration, the permanent result of which is the word of God (C. J.
Nitzsch; Rothe), produces itself as the expression
of present experience. Just as soon as the thread
of continuity is broken, as among the Jews after
the exile and in the post-Apostolic Church, perception becomes readily darkened. That, however, not
merely its Caput mortuum is present, is proved by
the experience that this word may by proxy represent the manifestation more effectively than the
manifestation itself, where there is a thorough activity of the Spirit. This statement of the selfrevelation of God does not explain how religion
originated on the whole or primarily. The knowledge concerning God, who may then be sought and
rediscovered in his world-activity, is presupposed
in all revealing action; the Bible knows nothing
concerning a monotheism discovered only in late
times. The fact of religion is presupposed for all
men, and not until the state of religious necessity
appears does revelation come under observation.
Revelation is fundamentally always the self-evidencing of God for the recognition of him, and only
subsequently does it extend itself also to the correlative. Wherefore, the knowledge of God has just
the opposite force, within these limits, of humanly
found and humanly conditioned thoughts concerning the divine. For it no simpler or more absolute
testimony can be given than that of the first petition of the Lord's Prayer. Neither are the depths
of deity exhausted in every dimension nor are the
means provided for the impenetration of the universe in detail (theosophy); only the reality and
verity of the acquaintance with the self-revealing
God are assured.

It has already become clear that the historicity
of revelation is not alone to be proved in the fact
that it fulfils itself in actuality that must first be
understood in order to be described;

9. Philo- much rather the emphasis rests upon
sophic Ad- the complex happening, evidently in
justment of fulfilment of a purpose, in which the

this View. indicating word is involved in a cor
responding onward movement. So it
may well be said of revelation, that it generates a
development; in a certain sense also that it devel
ops in its results. Only that such revelation must
not be taken as analogous to the process in nature,
but is to be conceived as the manifestation of a
training according to design; for otherwise there
would be a becoming manifest by means of, but not
a revelation to, human consciousness. If abstract
metaphysics, to the extent of deism, has assumed
too disparate a conception of the highest being for
alternative activity with the finite, then modern
anthropology takes too disparate a conception of
the subjectivity of persons to get any farther with
respect to influence upon them than a stimulus to
self-propulsion. Both exclude such a revealing op
eration of God, which is something else than a con
dition of the well-ordering of the whole. Therefore
the God-man must be, apart from the ethical, a
cosmic ordering and with him and in him is revela
tion (Dorner). At this point comes to view the de
pendence of the various forms of the conception of

revelation upon cosmology. Something of this kind
seems to be unavoidably bound up with the solution of the problem of the natural or the supernatural character of revelation through the generalizing of this idea, which is really indigenous only to
the circle of New-Testament religions. Therefore,
it is advisable, in its theological treatment, not to,
overlook how, in its origins, revelation serves, not
only to weigh the knowledge of God afforded by it
over against other representations; but, much more,
to. distinguish it as the true over against the deceptions; and not to forget how positively revelation
is identified in thought, not merely with the reality
of contact with God, but above all with the truth of
the knowledge of God. In the restriction of the
concept to this one side of the comprehensive activity of God, by which he founds the new life and
within it the perfect religion, it preserves its peculiar significance, and is indispensable for the maintenance of the understanding of the religious relation on the high level of personal life, be it in the
form of religiousness or of positive religion.